History

Last year I was approached and asked if I would be willing to design a tattoo for them. I said yes, but was cautious and kind of terrified. I had never been asked to design something that could potentially fuck up a person’s body before. Thankfully it turned out great! Here’s the design:

And here’s the finished product:

I’m sure the tattoo artist has to compensate for many things I wasn’t aware of when it comes to designing for a tattoo, but the fact everyone is happy makes me happy (and relieved)

Most of us are familiar with the fragile music of Nick Drake, who for many, became a poster-child of isolation and despair. For few of us, however, are familiar with the music that Nick’s mother, Molly recorded in the 50s. I know I wasn’t. Now that I am, I am hungry to hear more. Here is the press release from the label:

Squirrel Thing Recordings, the label behind the mysterious lost recordings of Connie Converse, is proud to announce the release of Molly Drake—a self-titled collection of never-before-heard songs recorded in the 1950’s at the Drake family home, and lovingly restored by Nick Drake’s engineer John Wood. According to Joe Boyd, legendary producer of Five Leaves Left and Bryter Later, “this is the missing link in the Nick Drake story.”

Molly Drake is a comprehensive first look at a singular and sophisticated artist, whose influence on her son’s celebrated musical style is undeniable. The CD features a custom letterpressed jacket, family photos, and a biography by her daughter, Gabrielle Drake.

Much like her son, Molly Drake’s music is at once beautiful, charming, dark and pensive. The easy elegance of her lyrics belies their deeper themes of regret, memory, dread, and the sublime, crystallized as only a poet can. Her performances are intimately staged in the family sitting room, and perfectly complemented by her own piano accompaniment.

I had always intended to reignite Trash Complex for the new year with a list of my favourite albums of 2012. Then I started to lose interest in the notion, wondering what the point of such an exercise was. This is extended not only to the seeming redundancy of creating a list such as you will see below, but also to the act of critical writing, which is one I don’t overly enjoy. As a fiction writer, it became disempowering to spend so much time writing about the work of others when there was so much of my own work I wanted to explore. As much as writing a list like this feels superflous and self-congratulatory, the reality is that music with such a small listenership needs lists like this, otherwise that small listenership becomes even smaller. So… if this list can inspire even a single person to explore even a single release, it serves a purpose beyond my ego.

The following are the twenty-one albums that meant the most to me in 2012. It’s twenty-one because I miscounted and couldn’t be arsed removing anything from the list. They haven’t been ranked; rather I’ve decided to order them based on their title. There may be some that are out of print. If that’s the case, I apologise. I know how frustrating that can be. A caveat that should be stated: I haven’t fully absorbed the mass of Kevin Drumm’s self-released CDs yet. As such, none will appear in the below list. I imagine that at least a couple would warrant it though. Where possible, I’ve tried to include audio for each release and a quick guide can be found at the bottom of the post. Let’s get started.

A little while ago, I uploaded this short film by Polish experimental animator, Maciej Cwiek called ‘Video-Disc’ to YouTube. I thought it would be sensible to share it because it’s quite lovely. I’ll upload more Polish animation over time because it’s wonderful.